or whether some fancy for butterfly prettiness lurking
in the fastnesses of the old woman’s rugged
nature had been snared by the gay face and dancing
eyes, it was apparent that she at least was in love
with Statira. She allowed herself to be poked
about and rearranged as to her shawl and the narrow-brimmed
youthful hat which she wore on the peak of her skull,
and she softened to something like a smile at the touch
of Statira’s quick hands.
They had all come rather early to make their parting
visit at the Sewells, for the Barkers were going to
take the two o’clock train for Willoughby Pastures,
while Statira was to remain in Boston till he could
make a home for her. Lemuel promised to write,
as soon as he should be settled, and tell Sewell about
his life and his work; and Sewell, beyond earshot
of his wife, told him he might certainly count upon
seeing them at Willoughby in the course of the next
summer. They all shook hands several times.
Lemuel’s mother gave her hand from under the
fringe of her shawl, standing bolt upright at arm’s-length
off, and Sewell said it felt like a collection of corn-cobs.
“Well?” said Sewell’s wife, when
they were gone.
“Well,” he responded; and after a moment
he said, “There’s this comfort about it
which we don’t always have in such cases:
there doesn’t seem to be anybody else.
It would be indefinitely worse if there were.”
“Why, of course. What in the world are
you thinking about?”
“About that foolish girl who came to me with
her miserable love-trouble. I declare, I can’t
get rid of it. I feel morally certain that she
went away from me and dismissed the poor fellow who
was looking to her love to save him.”
“At the cost of some other poor creature who’d
trusted and believed in him till his silly fancy changed?
I hope for the credit of women that she did.
But you may be morally certain she did nothing of the
kind. Girls don’t give up all their hopes
in life so easily as that. She might think she
would do it, because she had read of such things,
and thought it was fine, but when it came to the pinch,
she wouldn’t.”
“I hope not. If she did she would commit
a great error, a criminal error.”
“Well, you needn’t be afraid. Look
at Mrs. Tom Corey. And that was her own sister!”
“That was different. Corey had never thought
of her sister, much less made love to her, or promised
to marry her. Besides, Mrs. Corey had her father
and mother to advise her, and support her in behaving
sensibly. And this poor creature had nothing but
her own novel fed fancies, and her crazy conscience.
She thought that because she inflicted suffering upon
herself she was acting unselfishly. Really the
fakirs of India and the Penitentes of New Mexico are
more harmless; for they don’t hurt any one else.
If she has forced some poor fellow into a marriage
like this of Barker’s she’s committed a
deadly sin. She’d better driven him to suicide,
than condemned him to live a lie to the end of his
days. No doubt she regarded it as a momentary
act of expiation. That’s the way her romances
taught her to look at loveless marriage—as
something spectacular, transitory, instead of the
enduring, degrading squalor that it is!”
